Firefox OS-based ZTE Open to cost just £59.99 on eBay

Fancy grabbing yourself a ZTE Open – you know, the debut Firefox OS smartphone that was announced at the beginning of last month?

Well we said ZTE and Mozilla were “aiming low” with the entry level device, and we were right: you'll be able to pick one up soon for as little as £59.99.

ZTE has announced it is teaming up with eBay in the US and UK and will use the online auction giant to sell the Open directly to the public on a “Buy it now” basis.

The super-low price tag (it'll go for $79.99 in the US, incidentally) is sure to attract attention to the fledgling OS, which is clearly the point, but on a pure hardware basis it's hard to see how ZTE could feasibly hope to sell it for much more than that.

The 3.5in display runs at just 480 x 320, while the single-core Qualcomm MSM7225A chipset labours along on the inside, assisted by 256MB of RAM and just 512MB of internal storage. The camera, such as it is, offers just 3.2MP of shooting resolution.

It's par for the course on the wireless connectivity front with the presence of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS support, and the 1,200mAh battery shouldn't have too much trouble with the limited spec.

The ZTE Open isn't really about the hardware, though – it's about getting the Firefox OS out into the wild, and this is intended as no more than a departure point for the web-based OS to give those interested a taste of the platform's potential.

“With a great potential user base, we know that even more developers around the world will create their apps with new APIs to stimulate an inspiring new wave of innovation.”

It all sounds good in theory, but then so do many things in life. The key question is, even at £60, will enough people take the plunge for all that stimulating and inspiring to start happening in the first place? It's a seriously tough ask right now.